Barb Hendee's Blog: Barb Hendee, page 23

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We are sorry to bother you, so just ignore this post. We are testing out a new way to deliver news to some of our social network accounts.

Some real news should be coming within the week (fingers crossed) now that the proof notes for S3B3 A Wind in the Night have be returned to our publisher. 

—Barb & J.C.

Barb and J.C. Hendee at NobleDead.org.

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Just a brief note about where we are, what we are doing, and what is to come (that we can foresee at the moment). We received print “proofs” for S3B3: A Wind in the Night (Jan. 2014) and are working our way through this coming novel for the last time. Any corrections from us must be returned to the publisher soon, so this work will fill the rest of this week.

In September will come another entry in T·N·D·S: Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga. It will be released mid-month, as J.C. needs time between online / offline management duties and his own writing to compile the ebook and a new cover.

MB2: The Forgotten Mistress, by Barb, is the sequel to MB1: The Forgotten Lord in the “Tales of Misbelief” collection. Keep an eye out for the release announcement coming next month. And of course there is even more to come as we figure out our ever-shifting schedule of other things to fit around our work on the Noble Dead Saga. Thanks for stopping by!

Barb and J.C. Hendee at NobleDead.org.

When I was mainly posting over at the Barb Hendee website, every few weeks, I’d put up a photo of Ashes or Cinders—the new “writers’ cats.”

JC and I had two cats for nearly twenty years, and a little over two years ago, they both passed away within months of each other. It was difficult, and we spent over a year with no kitties and no intention of adopting new kitties. But two small kittens who desperately needed a home came into our lives about a year ago. They are cats now, but still filled with the energy of kittens. We adore them.

However, they are soooooo different from our first pair. Our darling Cinders is happiest when she’s outside, but JC and I won’t allow them to play outside if they are unsupervised. We do take them out two or three times a day, but we watch them and play with them. This morning, we are busy, and here is Cinders gazing longingly out the window, wishing she was outside.

Barb and J.C. Hendee at NobleDead.org.

#books, #ebook, #fantasybooks, #barbhendee, #jchendee, #fantasy, #highfantasy

Barb here. I have never considered myself a short story writer.  Most of the ideas that hit me are “novel length.” I think JC is similar. Also, most magazines that publish short fiction consider a seven thousand word story to be quite long. I’m just gearing up at seven thousand, and JC is worse.

We sold Dhampir in 2001, and it was published in January of 2003, by which point we had finished writing Thief of Lives. To date, I’ve now sold nineteen novels. I’m more comfortable working at the novel length. 

However, when we came up with the idea for the TNDS: Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga, we found ourselves drawn to the idea of longer-than-short stories. Since we were to e-self-publish them, they could be any length we chose. I find that one of the more liberating aspects of this explosion in e-self-publishing…

So…we talked about the TNDS (or the “Tales”) project for months before we really got started. There were so many decisions to make. At first JC even wondered if he was a “good enough” digital artist (he would say “graphics hacker”) to do the covers. He has been spectacular. Then we wondered, “Do we go through an aggregator like Smashwords or do we try to handle everything ourselves?

We are independent souls by nature, and we went with the latter. JC set up accounts for us on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and then finally Apple (which we recently dropped). Then came the really hard part: asking ourselves what our fans might most like to read… and/or what might appeal to those who’ve never read anything by us.

JC decided to start off with the (slightly different) dwarves of our world. He wrote Karras the Kitten followed later by the first sequel Karras the Cat.  Both works ended long enough to push the envelope for novellas by current length standards.

I decided to start with Loni, the lone elf living in Miiska (the home town of Magiere, Leesil, and Chap), and tell how he came to be there. At first, even attempting short fiction (after so many years of writing novels)  was very awkward for me. I created an outline as I would for a novel, and the first draft was much longer than the final published version of The Game Piece.

The story was well received, and I began to wonder what to work on next. I thought popular characters from the past might be a good place to start, so I wrote some “fill in the blank” pieces about Rashed, Teesha, and Ratboy. I enjoyed writing those, and the short fiction medium was getting easier for me, but these stories made me feel like I was back working in the past and not the present.

When the idea for the The Keepers struck me, I knew I had something.  I’ve always loved writing about the dark, dripping world of Droevinka, and one of the darkest things JC and I have ever written is the sequence in Sister of the Dead when Magiere, Leesil, and Chap find those sacrificed bodies of the five races in the cellars of Chemestúk Keep.  I’ve never forgotten the family living there (Cadell, Nadja, and Jan) who helped our heroes with this.

After writing The Keepers, I saw a way to expand the world with something “new” and still give our fans the same flavor of what they’d come to expect from the Noble Dead Saga. I couldn’t wait to write the next story, The Reluctant Guardian, and after that… Jan and Julianna got inside my head and started something entirely new with Captives.

JC and I are creating these stories in the cracks of time around various deadlines on our novels, but we’ve both found the project to be surprisingly fun and liberating. We’ve come to realize that we might be short story writers after all… as long as we have no limits on length.

Barb and J.C. Hendee at NobleDead.org.

JC and I had a great time yesterday driving out to the coast, to Lincoln City, for a multiple-author signing.  There were about thirty writers in attendance at Bob’s Beach Books. 

When we arrived in the morning, it was raining lightly, but the event was well organized, and the tables had been set up beneath white tents.  JC and I sold some Noble Dead books and a few Vampire Memories books, but by the time the event ended, we  had only one copy of The Mist-Torn Witches left.  That book seemed to be our big seller of the day.  I think this was because it’s the first book of a new series, and the Noble Dead Saga is starting to look a little over-whelming when the whole series is laid out.  Hah!

Barb and J.C. Hendee at NobleDead.org.

#books, #ebooks, #fantasybooks, #fantasy, #highfantasy, #nobledeadsaga, #mistornwitches

Certainly a quick catch-up, Nook readers can now get this new release in T·N·D·S: Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga.

SILENT BELLS
sequel to The Sleeping Curse
Barb Hendee
$2.99 USD
Short story, 13k words

So pop on over or use the link provided above for convenience.

Barb and J.C. Hendee at NobleDead.org.

#nobledeadsaga #misttornwitches #nobledeadseries #nobledead
This will be the final notice, article, update, etc. to pass through BarbHendee.org. All future news from Barb and/or J.C. about published works and other things will be distributed only through NobleDead.org, its direct RSS/Atom feeds, and its linked social system pages.
In other words, if you have not done so already in following Barb, time to switch over to NobleDead.org.
There are still tasks to complete in this transition;...



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We have begun changing our news distribution feeds. Don’t panic! Our Feedburner.com feeds will continue through this Friday, but our new direct feeds are now available.
If you follow Noble­Dead­.org and/or Barb­Hendee­.org through RSS/Atom feeds, go to Noble­Dead­.org (only) to find the new links in our right-hand column under “Follow ‘NobleDead.org’ You Way.” Change the linked URLs in...



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In our careful steps for moving content from Barb­Hendee­.org over to Noble­Dead­.org, there are other changes being made. This coming Friday (July 16th, 2013), we will discontinue using FeedBurner.com for RSS/Atom feeds and deliver such directly from NobleDead.org (only).
NOTE: This will not directly affect anyone following NobleDead.org through its linked social system pages.
Here’s what else you need to...



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We are in the process of moving content from Barb­Hendee­.org over to Noble­Dead­.org. You can now find Barb’s novels for The Mist-Torn Witches series and the Vampire Memories series in the “Books” section of NobleDead.org. Considering that Barb’s recent professional works as well as her T·N·D·S short ebook “Tales” are all set in the world of the Noble Dead Saga, it simply made sense for us to work out of one site into the future. We are used to working together anyway, if you...



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